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Diaries of a Torubled Scientist – Chapter 1 – part 3

The particle accelerator did have its purposes, the lab made sure of that – but this was not as important as what was just behind it. There behind the giant machine stood an even greater experiment – and I might have been lying to you. What I was working on, it was not the particle accelerator. It was a much grander project.
We used vast supercomputers to predict the weather, but we could not predict it in painstaking detail. The computer was limited before I started working at that laboratory – but when I started, it was not.
We were perfecting a new computing technique. It’s architecture was very bizarre but it allowed for greatly, greatly improved performance.
This new technique harnessed light.
You might be wondering how on earth something like that could be achieved, but I will explain it here.
In your time certain materials had been discovered to change their electro-conductivity when introduced to light – due to light’s ability to behave like a stream of particles (namely photons). Such materials had their uses, but something much bigger was in store.
Since scientists discovered that manufacturing certain materials in space made them purer – away from the earth’s harsh gravity, more experiments were conducted in space laboratories and finally a material was made that could – on exposure to light – produce a larger than expected electric charge. This material had its electrons positioned in a certain way (Which became known as volatile engineering) so that when even one single electron was moved out of place, a chain reaction caused the entire atom chain to shift completely – thus, moving the electrons (And more importantly, a single delocalized electron) as well in a linear pattern. Such a substance produced an astonishing amount of heat but its implications were enormous.
It was a major breakthrough for solar technology but it also benefited the discreet science lurking in the back.
Unfortunately at that stage scientists could not in their wildest dreams get rid of the electron as a power source but the new material could replace how the CPU (central processing unit) performed.
A new light based model was formulated while the scientific community went crazy. A system that harnessed the complexity and flexibility (The ability to perform as a wave or a stream of particles) of light and its terrific speed as a way to process instructions.